Advice on creating a great wedding

Congratulations! Now that you have found each other, pledged to begin to entwine your hearts and lives together, you have now entered the wedding zone—an alternate reality where lifelong dreams clash in family feuds and the money sucking wedding industry stalks you like a B movie zombie. Relax. It doesn’t have to be like this. Smile. Here are some tips to starting your life together with joy, style and love.

• Tip 1: Remember that its YOUR wedding, not a movie roll that you have to act out. Talk with each other about your wishes for your wedding and then work together to make them happen. Create some special touches and moments that will make you and your loved ones smile. The one special thing that I will suggest for all weddings is to kiss well and long. This is a memory that you will have for the rest of your life.
• Tip 2: Hire wedding professionals that understand that it’s your wedding and that work to make your wishes come true.
• Tip 3: Remember your families. A wedding is both a celebration of your love and a coming together of families and friends. By honoring your families you will be helping to create bonds that will be very important throughout your lives. Presenting flowers to parents, mentioning them in toasts and honoring them with dances are important moments.
• Tip 4: Watch out for bad toasts and speeches. The toasts and speeches at weddings are supposed to be kind, touching and sincere tributes to the bride, groom and families. If you see a best man drinking heavily before the toast it is likely that he is planning a speech that might seem funny to a drunk best man, but be so insulting and scandalous that it invokes a riot at your wedding. Just have a chat with those planning to speak at your wedding about the proper tone of a toast. A good toast will make the room light up for twenty minutes. A bad one will never, ever be forgotten. This goes double for anything you and your loved one say to each other.
• Tip 5: If you are trying to save money cut down on the alcohol. One or two glasses of champagne is enough to get people smiling; ten glasses will get them staggering and fighting.
• Tip 6: Get dressed earlier than you planned. If a button pops off or you find out you have rented two right shoes, there will be time to fix this without panic or screaming. The point is to have fun and going through your day relaxed and smiling is a pretty great idea.
• Tip 7: Dance together.
• Tip 8: Put someone(s) else in charge during the wedding. You should have other people professionals or friends in charge of details of the wedding so you can have time to pay attention to each other. No one should be coming to you to talk about parking cars or where to put the gifts during your first dance.
• Tip 9: Try to do your planning early so you don’t get stressed near the wedding day.
• Tip 10: Send thank you notes. It's classy.